The fifth entry in the Charlie Fox thriller series, Sharp delivers solid action and a nicely conflicted main character set against the backdrop of the extravagant world of the obscenely wealthy.
Charlie Fox spent time in the British Army and underwent Special Forces training, but ended up in the Manhattan offices of a private security firm specializing in close personal protection. Her boyfriend, Sean, sustained grave injuries, chronicled in Sharp’s previous novel, Fourth Day (2011), and remains in a coma. Charlie visits him every day, hoping to spark him into waking from his three-month sleep, but doctors aren’t optimistic. In the meantime, there’s a building attraction to another man that’s worrisome. Meanwhile, Charlie has been assigned to guard a rich young woman named Dina. Dina lives in the Hamptons with her wealthy mother and spends her days riding her champion horses and attending social functions where people like the billionaire Eisenberg family throw down. Charlie’s only one of many bodyguards who shadow the spoiled and shallow progeny of the very rich; a recent spate of kidnappings has made everyone jumpy and even more security conscious than ever. The kidnappers started with one young girl and worked their ways through the younger set, finally cutting off half the finger of one young heir. Now it looks like Dina may be next and her mother is determined that she remain safe, but Charlie’s finding this one difficult. Between Dina’s stubborn refusal to remain on her guard and the bad behavior of the crowd she wants to hang around with, Charlie must try and figure out who wants to snatch her young charge and when they will try. Sharp’s fifth entry is as gritty and unapologetically dark and violent as her others, although the author tends to spout statistics that sound derived straight from a reference book. But Charlie is a likable-enough character, and while readers won’t be surprised by the turn of events, they should be interested enough to want to stay until the end. A taut, dark thriller with plenty of action.
Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-60598-276-2
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Pegasus Crime
Review Posted Online: Nov. 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2011
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that...
Twenty-four years after a traumatic disappearance tore a Georgia family apart, Slaughter’s scorching stand-alone picks them up and shreds them all over again.
The Carrolls have never been the same since 19-year-old Julia vanished. After years of fruitlessly pestering the police, her veterinarian father, Sam, killed himself; her librarian mother, Helen, still keeps the girl's bedroom untouched, just in case. Julia’s sisters have been equally scarred. Lydia Delgado has sold herself for drugs countless times, though she’s been clean for years now; Claire Scott has just been paroled after knee-capping her tennis partner for a thoughtless remark. The evening that Claire’s ankle bracelet comes off, her architect husband, Paul, is callously murdered before her eyes and, without a moment's letup, she stumbles on a mountainous cache of snuff porn. Paul’s business partner, Adam Quinn, demands information from Claire and threatens her with dire consequences if she doesn’t deliver. The Dunwoody police prove as ineffectual as ever. FBI agent Fred Nolan is more suavely menacing than helpful. So Lydia and Claire, who’ve grown so far apart that they’re virtual strangers, are unwillingly thrown back on each other for help. Once she’s plunged you into this maelstrom, Slaughter shreds your own nerves along with those of the sisters, not simply by a parade of gruesome revelations—though she supplies them in abundance—but by peeling back layer after layer from beloved family members Claire and Lydia thought they knew. The results are harrowing.
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that she makes most of her high-wire competition look pallid, formulaic, or just plain fake.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-242905-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo’s compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally...
Yale’s secret societies hide a supernatural secret in this fantasy/murder mystery/school story.
Most Yale students get admitted through some combination of impressive academics, athletics, extracurriculars, family connections, and donations, or perhaps bribing the right coach. Not Galaxy “Alex” Stern. The protagonist of Bardugo’s (King of Scars, 2019, etc.) first novel for adults, a high school dropout and low-level drug dealer, Alex got in because she can see dead people. A Yale dean who's a member of Lethe, one of the college’s famously mysterious secret societies, offers Alex a free ride if she will use her spook-spotting abilities to help Lethe with its mission: overseeing the other secret societies’ occult rituals. In Bardugo’s universe, the “Ancient Eight” secret societies (Lethe is the eponymous Ninth House) are not just old boys’ breeding grounds for the CIA, CEOs, Supreme Court justices, and so on, as they are in ours; they’re wielders of actual magic. Skull and Bones performs prognostications by borrowing patients from the local hospital, cutting them open, and examining their entrails. St. Elmo’s specializes in weather magic, useful for commodities traders; Aurelian, in unbreakable contracts; Manuscript goes in for glamours, or “illusions and lies,” helpful to politicians and movie stars alike. And all these rituals attract ghosts. It’s Alex’s job to keep the supernatural forces from embarrassing the magical elite by releasing chaos into the community (all while trying desperately to keep her grades up). “Dealing with ghosts was like riding the subway: Do not make eye contact. Do not smile. Do not engage. Otherwise, you never know what might follow you home.” A townie’s murder sets in motion a taut plot full of drug deals, drunken assaults, corruption, and cover-ups. Loyalties stretch and snap. Under it all runs the deep, dark river of ambition and anxiety that at once powers and undermines the Yale experience. Alex may have more reason than most to feel like an imposter, but anyone who’s spent time around the golden children of the Ivy League will likely recognize her self-doubt.
With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo’s compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally dazzling sequels.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-31307-2
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
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